A Shadow Bright And Burning

“What is that?” Agrippa asked.

“An old schoolyard chant about the Ancients. I suppose our conversation brought it back to me.” It took a moment to recall the words, and then I sang,

“Seven are the Ancients, seven are the days,

Monday for R’hlem, the Skinless Man,

On-Tez on Tuesday, the old Vulture Lady,

Callax is Wednesday, the Child Eater,

Zem the Great Serpent crisps Thursday with his breath,

On Friday fear Korozoth, the Shadow and Fog,

Never sail on Saturday says Nemneris the Water Spider,

And rain on Sunday brings Molochoron the Pale Destroyer.”

When I’d finished, Agrippa applauded.

“Very nice,” he said. “Not much of a rhyme, though.”

“It was less about the song and more about chasing each other,” I said. Agrippa laughed and was summoned to his coach. He kissed my hand.

“Farewell, Miss Howel. It was a pleasure.”

Though I should’ve been glad to see him depart, a queer sort of sadness descended on me. I watched until his carriage vanished up the road into a bank of fog. Only then did I go down to the kitchen to prepare Rook’s paste.

As I struggled to remember ingredients and mash herbs, I cursed my subpar potion making. Most witches were skilled herbalists. If I must live in fear for my life, why couldn’t I have helpful magical powers? I wished I’d had a mother to teach me. Bother that, I wished I’d had a mother for anything. Finished, I ran outside and down the lane toward the moor.

Even weighted by my stays and heavy skirts, I loved racing through the pale purple-and-white heather. The hills rolled and crested around me, and I soon arrived at the meeting place, an outcropping of dark gray stone on the heath. Rook and I had discovered it years ago, during a failed attempt to run away.

Rook sat beneath an overhang of rock, rubbing his eyes. His left arm hung limp in his lap. Damn. His suffering must’ve been worse than he’d let on.

“I have the paste. How bad is it?” I knelt beside him.

“Oh, I’d call it bad,” he said. His voice didn’t break, but I could tell by the tense line of his jaw that he was in terrible pain. He attempted to slide off his jacket without upsetting his left arm.

“Let me help.” After removing the jacket, shirt, and cotton vest beneath, I inspected a body that was lean and hardened from work.

A body covered in scars.

Rook was Unclean, wounded by one of the Ancients. Great circular scars like suction marks, still an angry and swollen red these many years later, covered the left side of his chest. They decorated his collarbone like some obscene necklace and ran down his back and left arm. Sometimes, when the pain was extreme, his hand would go rigid and his fingers would curl into his palm. Korozoth himself had mutilated my friend during an attack on a camp of brick makers. The soldiers who’d rescued Rook brought him to shelter at Brimthorn, thinking he’d be dead by morning. Eight years later, and that morning hadn’t come.

I rubbed the paste into his palm, kneading the skin until his fingers loosened. I straightened them out, ignoring his hissed intakes of breath at the pain. Within a few minutes, his hand relaxed. Rook closed his eyes in relief.

“Thank you,” he murmured, clasping my hand in his. Slowly, I twined our fingers together.

“Your grip is still strong,” I said, smiling. When I reached to touch his chest, he flinched.

“You needn’t help me more than necessary. I’m in your debt enough as it is.” He often shied from my touch these days. It made me feel clumsy and perverse, as if I should be repulsed by his scars when I wasn’t at all.

“Let’s look at your back,” I grumbled. Dabbing at the paste, I sat behind him and gasped.

Besides the scars, long red welts blazed on his skin. Someone had struck him with a birch cane.

“Bastard,” I hissed as I tried to soothe the wounds.

“It was my own fault,” Rook said. “I wasn’t able to help with the horses. Colegrind had to come out and see to it himself.”

“Of course you’re slow when the scars flare up. He should know that by now.”

“I don’t want special treatment,” Rook said, his voice firm. I held my tongue and worked quickly. Finished, I laid my hand on his back.

“Movement should be easier now,” I said.

“Oh yes.” He sighed, shifting beneath my hand. “God knows what I would do in this world without you, Nettie.”

“Stop calling me Nettie, Rook.” I smiled. This was an age-old battle. A terrible childhood nickname, Nettie made me sound like an old lady or a hen.

“Have to call you Nettie, Nettie.” I felt him laugh. “You can’t break with tradition, as Colegrind tells us.” Rook leaned away from me and took up his vest. With a grunt, he began to pull it over his head. I held back, knowing he’d be cross if I tried to help now. “The sorcerer’s gone?”

“Yes. That was far too close.” Unladylike as it was, I flopped onto my back and stared up at the sky.

“Even if you are a witch, it’s not as though you’re Mary Willoughby herself.” Rook sighed, lying down beside me. “She’s dead and gone.”

“Her legacy isn’t, though.” For thousands of years, witches had existed on the fringe of society. They were known as strange women, a bit dangerous if you weren’t careful, but they’d mostly lived in peace. That all changed when a witch named Mary Willoughby opened up a portal between worlds and summoned the Ancients, starting this long, bloody war. I remembered a book I’d had when I was ten, A Child’s History of the Ancients. In it, there was a picture of a lady with wild black hair and insane eyes, her hands raised to a stormy sky. Mary Willoughby, the worst woman in the kingdom, the caption read.

“She was burned,” I said. “All witches are burned.” If Agrippa had found me out…well, I actually couldn’t be burned, could I? He would have to be creative with my death. Lord, what an unsettling thought.

“Seems un-Christian, don’t it? Burning people alive.”

“Especially when you consider she had help,” I said.

“Yes, from the magician.” Rook smiled as I sat up in surprise. “You taught me to read with that old Ancients book, remember? Howard Mickelmas. He helped open the gate. Never caught him, did they?”

“No, magicians are tricky by nature.” Magicians were filthy beasts, full of deception. Everyone knew that. At least witches had an air of tragic nobility about them.

“Why d’you think they burn one kind and not the other?” Rook said. “Why aren’t magicians killed, too?”

This conversation was doing nothing for my nerves. Brushing the whole topic aside, I stood and walked around the rock, clutching my shawl. Rook joined me.

“I don’t want to worry about magic any longer,” I said, standing in the road. All around us was silence, except the wind sighing through the heather. Awful as Brimthorn was, one could never match Yorkshire for moments of grand solitude. Rook and I were alone, save for a traveler on horseback in the distance. “I want to think about the shop we’re going to open.”

“It’ll be in Manchester, or maybe Canterbury,” Rook said, going along with the old game. “We should open a bookshop, with all the books bound in old leather.”

“I think that’s the most glorious smell, a library of old books,” I said. Apart from Rook, my only good memories of Brimthorn consisted of hours reading in a favored window seat. Colegrind, bad as he was, had at least been generous with his personal library. One summer, I’d gone through Le Morte d’Arthur three times. My favorite moment had to be when Arthur pulled the sword from the stone, transforming from commoner to king in one instant.

Rook shook his head. “Granted, we can’t move to Canterbury. The Vulture Lady lives on the cathedral.” He was right. On-Tez, one of the Ancients, had ruled the city for the past three years. She was a large, hideous beast with the body of a filthy carrion bird and the head of an insane old woman. The name Vulture Lady suited her rather well.

“One day she’ll be gone, and we’ll sell books and anything else we want. Now, what shall we call our shop?” I asked. Rook didn’t respond. I nudged him. “Don’t say you can’t think of anything.” Rook moved away from me down the road, hands in his pockets. Surprised, I walked beside him. “What’s wrong?”

“The shop is a story we told ourselves when we were younger,” he said, looking at me. “You could have been a governess in a good house by now, with better food and pay. Why haven’t you tried for a position yet?”

Lord, not this argument again. “I’ll apply when I want to, but I don’t want to right now.”

“Why not?”

“Because I might set fire to the master’s drapes,” I said, rolling my eyes. “Besides, I can’t just…” I bit my tongue, but Rook caught on.

“Can’t what?” His jaw was set, his eyes hard.

“Leave you,” I said, wincing as I waited for his reaction.

He stopped us in the road. “Nettie, I don’t want you to ever keep yourself low because of me.”

“You’re being silly,” I snapped, wrapping my shawl tight around my shoulders. “I’m going home.” With that, I turned and walked off the road at a brisk pace, tramping across the moor. I waited to hear Rook’s footsteps, but he didn’t follow me. I stopped, exasperated. “Are you planning to live out here?”

✨To Be continued ✨

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